Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-03-08
FALSE ASSUMPTIONS.
The Chicago Drovers' journal Reviewed by
Texas Paper.
Texas Live Stock Journal.

Texas Paper.
Texas Live Stock journal.
The Chicago Drovers' Journal is brave
champion of the dressed beef syndicate
and the other live stock interests of Chi
cago. This is right. The Stock Journal
likes to see man or newspaper take up
for its own locality. Joe Blackburn, we
believe it was, said that if he lived in hell
he would praise the virtues of the devil.
And that is the proper spirit. The Drov-
ers' Journal makes out good case for its
clients; but in one particular, at least,its
premises are false and the deductions
therefrom are inevitably misleading. We
quote from the DroVers' Journal this par
agraph for the purpose of correction:
"If there are such great fortunes in the
dressed beef business as our New York
writer claims, will he please inform US
why the slaughterlng establishment
erected at Victoria, Tex about three
years ago, only ran a few months, then
closed up, and started again last year and
again failed; also the slaughteriUg house
at Fort Worth, Tex, which only ran q
short time and was closed out; also the
Strengthening house started st MedOra,
Oak, which commenced about three
wears ago and was abandoned last year.
All these houses have been started by men
of great wealth and in regions where the
bulk of our range cattle come from, and
by saughtering at the above points they
save all the shrinkage in shipping, feed
and freight on the road, stock yard
charges and commissions for selling,
thereby saving from So to SIS per head,
and still, with all these advantages, they
failed, and lost the stockholders several
millions of dollars. j. B. butcher, gen.
eral live stock agent Of the New York
Central Railroad; I. c. Eastman, slaugh-
terer and exporter; Mr.. Stern and Mr..
White, both large slaughterers, all OF
| New York city, and other prominent live
stock dealers, organized the St. Louis
! Dressed Beef Company, which opened
! November, 1858, and closed down Jan
! uary l, 1884, after having met with very
! heavy losses. They opened again about
| March, 1886, and are slaughtering about
| 100 cattle daily. Would it not seem
reasonable to suppose that If there was
! so much money in the dressed beef bust
ness as many uniformed persons be-
! lieve) the st. Louis Dressed Beef Com
pany would go into the business more ex-
! tensively, as they certainly have ample
I capital to do?"
As to the Fort Worth and Victoria refrig-
orators, the failure was unavoidable on
account of the manner in which they
were run. Instead of being operated "by
men of great wealth." they were ope
trsted by company thathad no money left
after putting up the plant. They could
not, for want of capital, buy beeves in
large enough numbers to run to their
full capacity. In fact, they were unable
to enter the market and buy beeves enough
to keep the refrigerator running week.
AID the business was then, to 8 large
extent, experimental. Every operation
was new, and some of them, that cost
great deal of money, were necessarily
failures. The market, too, was daily
declining one. Cattle were bought on
the range, and when their carcases were
received in New York prices had fallen so
that other beeveS could be purchased at
cheaper rates than were paid for them.
i But the one cause more than all others
that stood between the refrigerstors and